In a time of far too many child stars with difficult pasts and shaky recoveries, we've always marveled at the fact that one of the world's biggest — Ms. Emma Watson — has managed to stay so grounded and reserved. Can you remember any tales of her smashing Champagne flutes or stealing cars? Course you can't, not our Hermione.

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Turns out, according to an interview with the star in this month's W she was quite luckily born a tad prudish. "I was always a very serious child," she says, "I remember being 13 and girls in my class saying, 'So-and-so is going to kiss so-and-so on the school fields.' I said, 'That’s stupid. They’re too young for it to matter—he doesn’t love her, and that’s just a waste of time.' It’s amazing that I had any friends!"

Serious, maybe, but Watson also wasn't in any hurry to grow up, something that probably helped her avoid all the various pitfalls of young fame. "You need to have normal experiences of your own. I’ve never wanted to grow up too fast: I wanted to wear a sports bra until I was 22! The allure of being sexy never really held any excitement for me. I’ve never been in a terrible rush to be seen as a woman." Well, taking a look at these shot by Michael Thompson for the issue, she really doesn't have an option any more.

Indeed, it seems that Watson wasn't just uninterested in celebrity status, she straight-up pretended that millions of people didn't know who she was. "I lived in denial for as long as I possibly could," she says. "Until the age of 18, I would take the Oxford Tube, which is a public bus. Then it got to the point where the fact that I was on the bus would spread from one end to the other. I’d think, Why am I doing this to myself? Ignoring fame was my rebellion, in a funny way. I was insistent on being normal and doing normal things." Normal things like going to college, something even she now realizes wasn't quite right for her. "It probably wasn’t advisable to go to college in America and room with a complete stranger. And it probably wasn’t wise to share a bathroom with eight other people in a coed dorm. Looking back, that was crazy."

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Crazy, maybe. But if going to Brown is Watson's idea of 'crazy,' well, let's just say we won't waste any time worrying about her...like...ever. (W)